BASEBALL

BASEBALL; Teams Ready to Shop For Free-Agent Bargains

By RAFAEL HERMOSO

Published: December 20, 2003

This weekend could be reserved for baseball's bargain hunters, a time to sort through other teams' leftovers and fill a hole or two. Or tonight's deadline for teams to offer arbitration could be viewed as the opening of the holiday shopping season, carrying even more anxiety than the first day of free-agent negotiating because there are so many surprises.

''I'm always surprised, so I couldn't even venture a guess as to who will be the surprise guy,'' Toronto Blue Jays General Manager J. P. Ricciardi said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The deadline for offering contracts to players eligible for arbitration is midnight. Players not offered arbitration are called nontenders. This year's market could include Freddy Garcia, the Seattle Mariners pitcher who is a two-time All-Star but was 12-14 with a 4.51 earned run average last season and would be due a bump up from his $6.875 million salary in arbitration; Minnesota Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz; Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Adrian Beltre; and Colorado Rockies outfielder Jay Payton.

Kevin Millwood, who last year was traded from Atlanta to Philadelphia when the Braves decided not to tender him a contract, accepted the Phillies' offer of arbitration yesterday.

Millwood, a 14-game winner last year, will have his salary determined by an arbitrator if he and the Phillies cannot agree on a contract.

Jim Duquette, in his first off-season as the Mets' general manager, spoke about nontenders less than an hour after taking over for the fired Steve Phillips last June. It was an unusually forward-thinking view, displaying Duquette's eye for the dollar, and in keeping with the rest of baseball.

Kevin Towers, the San Diego Padres' general manager, said yesterday that teams try to project early in the off-season which arbitration-eligible players will not be offered contracts, then decide whether to spend money early in the free-agent market or after it becomes flooded with more players.

There is less reluctance, Towers said, to set a player free, because a team is more willing to gamble on re-signing its own player or a comparable one for less money after the nontender deadline.

''In the past, a club's fear was, 'If I nontender a player, I lose a really good player,' '' he said. ''Now they realize we can still sign them back.''

The Boston Red Sox' success last season with David Ortiz, who was a most valuable player candidate after being nontendered by the Twins, and the Chicago White Sox' with Esteban Loaiza, the runner-up for the American League Cy Young award after being set free by the Blue Jays, showed that teams can get significant contributions inexpensively.

''I think it's pretty obvious,'' Ricciardi said. ''A lot of guys are rewarded sometimes because of their service time as opposed to what their numbers are. I think clubs look at the numbers of their players in a different light and say, 'I don't want to pay this player the money that he's going to get in arbitration.' ''

Because the market will be awash in new free agents tomorrow, general managers and agents have been scrambling to re-sign or trade players projected for hefty raises through arbitration. Second-tier free agents like Brian Jordan or Raul Mondesi have motivation to get a deal done before tomorrow, when there will be more players competing for jobs.

Among the moves yesterday, Anaheim signed right fielder Jose Guillen to a two-year contract worth $6 million; the Chicago White Sox re-signed outfielder Carlos Lee, who hit 31 homers last season, for two years and $15 million; and the Montreal Expos did not offer a 2004 contract to the former Yankee Orlando Hernández, the Cuban pitcher who had season-ending surgery on May 15.

Two weeks ago, 139 free agents were not offered arbitration by their former teams for fear they would accept it, a figure that baseball officials said they thought was a record. The Expos cut their ties with Vladimir Guerrero, considered the premier free agent on the market, and the Braves let Gary Sheffield, Greg Maddux and Javy Lopez go without compensation. That could be a way that teams are responding to what has been a player-driven market.

''I don't think it's that at all,'' Ricciardi said. ''They're good players, but for lack of a better word, maybe they're not $5 million players.''

Photo: Mariners pitcher Freddy Garcia is one of several players who will become free agents if they are not offered arbitration by midnight. (Photo by Associated Press)